Microsoft asks students to imagine the limit of Surface - we learn there is none

Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced the next generation of their Surface tablet hybrid. The Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 were announced alongside, the Surface Music Cover, a new “blade” which allows users to easily remix music on a special touch sensitive cover. The venture has shown us that Surface has many capabilities beyond a typical keyboard and the Surface team headed to the Art Center College of Design to find out exactly how far Surface can go.

Students at the college were simply asked, “What if you could click in something else to your Surface?” With this question, almost a dozen students set out to test the limits of industrial, graphic, and interaction design - The results, were outstanding.

After a video montage of pizza, dubstep music, and endless drafts, the question “what if” was posed. What if the blade could be a painting Surface… a solar panel… provide a new way to navigate through space… help to diagnose someone?

This is truly Microsoft’s original goal with Surface. When the project was originally announced, we knew they were looking to go farther than an iPad or a standard tablet – the company set out to create a device that could change the world of computing and interaction, as we know it. And of course, the backend is powered by Windows 8.

Microsoft’s idea to turn the cover into much more than just a standard keyboard starts with Surface 2 – the question for the future is to ask, how our interaction with modern day computers will be changed. What are the possibilities with Surface?

The video is inspiring and really shows how far Microsoft’s Surface product can be taken. Look at the video and let us know what your favorite possibility for Surface is. I found the fold up piano keyboard as a wild idea.

As cool as this is, I was really hoping that they actually made prototypes of some of the stuff, and we could see them work. That would have been really neat to see some of it in action. The paint one looked really neat, and you really could do a whole "Art box" one. Have it include all the menu stuff from photoshop like paint brush, pen, smudge, etc. I'd be really interested to see what they could do with it.

Same here... Was expecting prototypes or such. Maybe it's a precursur video. One thing I will say though is it does open the consumer's mind to realise (much like Apple's proprietary port) that this connnection can mean a lot of different possibilities. TBH I didn't think of it so much before.

Yes the SP has the technology built in but the price is too high for me when the RT does most of what I need already. It's not practical to pay twice as much just for the ability to draw when an optional cover would be the better solution.

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wish this had come out a year ago, AFTER they had already coordinated with third party equipment makers so that we'd have seen the first blades coming out about 6 months ago. Imagine how much more hype the Surface would have had.

The "click in" campaign really only makes sense with this blade concept. Up to now (and I guess still) it implies that you need to click something in to really use the Surface. Hopefully more blades will come soon.

Instead of owning loads of these different blades, the next step would be to create one blade that can perform multiple tasks. Download an app to change the properties of the blade. Similar to Razer's additional keyboard section that changes depending on what you are doing (i forget the name).

Yes this. Simply build a blade with as many sensors you can fit on the surface like they did to the new Touch Cover 2. Then allow a framework where developers can tap into it and have different layouts appear according to the app.

A gaming keyboard or programming keyboard should have been an easy duh. Like a mouse pad area, some macro keys and 123456/qwerty/asdfg/zxcvb/crtl,alt space, mobile gamers dream. But alas Intel HD fraphis are eh... If AMD would make a power sipping APU with radeon graphics...BAM!!

For some reason I keep looking at the Surface 2 but not the pro. Normally for me its always the strongest of devices. But then my tablet now is just a mate to my main machine, more or less the family living room toy.

Since MS announced the Surface 2, a lot of people have been criticizing RT's woes and predicted its unavoidable failure. They have totally overlooked the Blade potentials. The Blade compliant peripherals can turn Surface 2 into unlimited potential applications which will go way beyond what people commonly perceived the tablet as a lite weight laptop. These added values could make Surface 2 much more attractive than the cheaper W8 BayTrail tablets. With more entertainment and business blades coming to the market, the value of Surface 2 will keep increasing. The Blade concept could turn out to be a revolutionary Interconnection standard among industries. All the electrical equipment today have some kinds of physical measurement units which are interconnected to a built-in computer unit to process, calculate, display and store data. With a proper designed Surface Blade compliant interface, the physical measurement units can directly communicate with Surface 2 to do those computing work and store data in the Cloud. Some of the electrical equipment can be manufactured at much lower costs by handling over the expensive computing function to Surface 2 and focus only on making the physical measuring units. The Surface 2 can be packaged in an industrial grade casing for the industry use. So the Blade standard potential can be as big as we can imagine.
Some potential Blade applications:
1. A piano keyboard Blade can turn Surface 2 into a music composing system
2. Different language keyboard Blades can help the world population using different languages
3. Testing equipment interface Blade bring physical data to Surface for processing and storing in the Cloud.
So may be the Surface 2 is not that expensive after all. :)

Ugh, Microsoft and that trash they call music. If Google wasn't culturally worse in so many additional respects I'd ditch WP in a heartbeat.

Also, while this really made me see the surface as a much more versatile, capable and amazing device, I just know that it won't happen for Microsoft. Either someone, like apple or google, will come up with something that makes this look primitive as heck, or Microsoft will not invest in it like they should, or it will simply not be something people care for (like free video calls, I remember how futuristic and amazing that seemed to be in the 90s to dumb apes like me, now its meh unless you're talking to someone you only get to see once every 20 years or something).

Just release special edition surface. Like HALO themed surface, includes HALO installed, halo themed cover, military standard that you can bring to battlefield, waterproof IP5678whatever, a plus if its cover can withstand AK .. wait a minute.. that would be great, you can sell it separately a bulletproof cover.

What if we print a grid of lines like that in a chess board, with each at right angle. Use selective lighting of the grid lines to make any keyboard layout. Now you can have a layout where anything type of button layout can be created.
We may additionally need ways to represent/show keys in this grid.
Lets not say its similar to using a touch based keyboard, but better as we'll have a full layout highlighted by the lights on the edges and keys that gets pressed.